Friday, June 24, 2016

Brexit Victorious!

I am absolutely thrilled at the magnificent Brexit result from across the pond! While the way ahead will not be quick or easy, the United Kingdom can now once again be a fully independent country. So very proud of all my Vote Leave friends in the UK who worked so hard for this victory and wish I could celebrate with them. We have proved that the arrogant "experts" who care little for what real people love can be defeated. I never thought I would say this, but my respect for the democratic process and the British public has been restored. Rule Britannia and God Save the Queen!

In my adult lifetime there have been three major referendums in the English-speaking world, all of which I wished I could have voted in (though few if any people could have voted in all three): Australia 1999, Scotland 2014, and Britain 2016. Incredibly, all three have now gone the way I wanted, though tonight's is the most surprising as it was the only one of the three in which I backed the anti-status-quo side. Maybe I am not so alone in this world politically after all. Maybe one day elsewhere in the world we will even see a successful referendum to restore a fallen monarchy!

7 comments:

Matthew Celestine said...

So are the 48% of us who voted for Remain not real people?

Patrick Sheridan said...

Why are you so surprised? No one wants to subsidise weaker economies, or would willingly consent to the dilution of their national identity in the name of a pipe dream ideology. The fact is that most people are sick of things as they are and want change. And the most encouraging thing for me is the voice of the old fashioned, working class Labour vote that in most general elections has been ignored by the Labour Party and found its courage and patriotism in a leave vote against the ideology of most Labour MPs that supposedly represent them.

Matthew Celestine said...

Well nearly half of the British people disagreed with you, Patrick. That's quite a lot of us.

Michael E. said...

@Theodore Harvey: Do you have any insight as to why people are comparing Brexit to the Donald Trump campaign--especially people who support both? I can't figure that out. I was both surprised and happy to learn of the UK voting to leave the EU--I will neither be surprised nor happy to find that Donald Trump will be our next President.

Theodore Harvey said...


I didn't say that everyone who voted Remain is not a real person. I meant that the "experts," who both before and after the Referendum implied that Brexit supporters were simply too stupid to know what was good for them or "racists" driven by "fear," were insensitive to the needs and concerns of real people.

I think some commentators see Brexit and the Trump movement as similarly driven by rejection of the political establishment and antipathy to immigration and globalization. I agree that they are very different though. For one thing, Brexit cut across partisan lines and included a vocal left-wing faction (e.g. Kate Hoey), whereas it's hard to imagine any self-identified liberals supporting Trump (though some who have voted Democrat in the past surely will).

Michael E. said...

Thanks for responding, both to me and to Matthew Celestine.

That's all I can think of as well, but that makes me think of people using the term "right wing" to refer to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, which only shows that such people don't know what that term means (I myself didn't until very recently). The similarity is superficial and hardly worth noting, as far as I can tell--it's just that they both oppose the same left-wing idols. But being opposed to the same thing doesn't mean you support the same thing or that both opponents are good.

David Votoupal said...

I think we can say that the common threads in the issues in the UK and USA, and elsewhere too, stem from two things in particular that have produced a populist backlash:

1) the post-1960s (although it certainly dates earlier) Political Correctness, or Frankfurt School Cultural Marxism, that pervades so many areas of life and has become even more of a menace to freedom than ever before, not least because left-liberal social engineering invariably engenders a more powerful and dangerous state. Hence we have SJWs, Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, Ferguson (ad infinitum), Rotherham (ad infinitum) etc.

2) the post-1960s industrial decline of the USA and UK, which is less the case in some Western European countries (especially Germany) which can still claim industry leadership alongside the powerhouse economies of East Asia (e.g. Japan, South Korea). Admittedly, many of British and American industries' problems were self-inflicted, although government policies haven't always helped.

Both of these things have had a negative impact on the traditional "majority" populations of the English-speaking world, who rightly or not, believe they are besieged. It's this anger which has helped fuel a good deal of the support for Trump, and to varying degrees, for Brexit as well.

The Brexit movement, as said above, is perhaps one of the broadest-based movements in recent history. As much as we despair about the modern world, the success of this at least gives us a fighting chance.